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Comment by nerdjon | Hacker News Reader

I have noticed that there seems to be a subset of gamers that want so badly for Linux gaming to be a thing that they ignore the problems.

For the record it is great, they have done a very good job with proton and I am not diminishing that work.

But try to bring up this conversation on YouTube, reddit, or similar places and it becomes toxic very quickly. Even when presented with raw numbers. It has even gotten that way here a couple times.

And the Steam thing is a big sore point right now, for the average user once you leave Steam it is not as user friendly as just running Windows.

Valve's marketing also isn't helping the situation in the slightest.

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It's just zealotry and tribalism. It's been a thing with Linux since I started using it back in 97 or whenever.

I'd say it's an inate property of all communities based around a given platform. It's not necessarily "wrong" either as obviously if someone is willing to use a platform, then they will also naturally be willing to overlook it's deficiencies.

The discord arrives not because they do not acknowledge the deficiencies but due to a difference in priorities, what one person values another may not.

It makes sense to me that their would be tension between people who want full control of their system & privacy in exchange for occasional performance cuts and unsupported anti cheats vs those that are comfortable completely giving up their privacy & control in exchange for occasional performance boosts and invasive anti cheats.

It's wrong and always a problem when people start lying, either to themselves, others or both.

I agree there is nothing wrong and people advocating for their preferences, opinions, arguments, solutions, whatever.

However, when you get so attached that you need to start lying to say it's better or that the alternatives are worse, that's no longer rational and makes the people doing so no longer trustworthy.

This is true for all types of tribalism across all areas of society.

Interesting take, but what exactly are you talking about here? You are asserting that some people are lying but who? On what basis? Is this really as big a problem as you are making it out to be? (In the context of nerd platform wars?)

> You are asserting that some people are lying but who?

Anyone making clearly false claims, for example.

I had a recent discussion with a Linux devotee, for example, claiming gaming on Linux was basically as good as Windows and that Linux had full DirectX equivalents. Both things are false, the user knows they are false, but that user lied to themselves due to loyalty to their preferred platform.

Apple users do it so often, the term reality distortion field was invented to describe their behavior. Sony and Zboz fans do it as well. Not to mention people do it with everything, i.e. political parties.

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